Two years ago, at five to eight in the evening of Monday 22 May 2023, I ran into the department store Galeries Lafayette at CAP 3000 next to Nice airport, grabbed two black blazers and rushed to the nearest checkout. ‘Je suis vraiment désolé, Madame, mais nous fermons.’ ‘Please, it’s not eight o’clock yet. My
The builder boyfriend returned from a trip to London to inform me he was being done for speeding at 32mph, for crying out loud. He was flashed by a camera crawling uphill in a 30 zone going through the almost middle-of-nowhere in the Ashdown Forest, on his way to visit his sister in Sussex for
Caroline has gone on strike. At least, as far as cooking is concerned. Her case for downing spatulas is that she’s been cooking steak, chicken and bacon for my three sons and me for the best part of 25 years and, as a vegetarian, she’s had enough. Henceforth, she’s going to prepare vegetarian meals. If
Without wanting to sound like a refugee from the 1950s, it was a shame that last week’s Cup Final was not the climax to the domestic season but sandwiched between a cluster of Premier League games – and kicked off at 4.30 p.m., which must have been unhelpful for those hoping to get a train
Q. I was caught off guard last week by a busybody mother at my son’s boarding school asking us to join them for their sports day picnic. I pretended we would have our son’s godparents with us but she just said words to the effect of ‘bring them, the more the merrier’. My son doesn’t
After a week in which Israel triumphed at the Eurovision Song Contest with second place – western Europe is for them, eastern Europe slightly less so (plus ça change) – I review Babbo, the new neighbourhood restaurant in St John’s Wood. Restaurants tend to drift in, settle and drift onwards here. The Victorians knew it
‘Farage is no leader,’ said Rupert Lowe MP. ‘He is a coward and a viper.’ Cedric Hardwicke immediately came to mind. As Dr Arnold in Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1940), he exclaims to Flashman: ‘You are a bully, a coward and a liar. There is no longer any place for you at Rugby.’ But I’m not
11 April 1876, Hobart, Tasmania – There is but one survivor of the Tasmanian race still alive, her name is Mrs or Queen Truccanine, she lives here ‘en famille’, the kind people who have taken her under their protection for some years get a government grant of £60 to help defray the expenses of her
Nearly always a thriller, Newbury’s Lockinge Stakes, instituted in 1958 and a Group 1 race since 1995, is an ever-welcome signpost to the Flat season. The Guineas Classics have started the three-year-old stories; the Lockinge shows us which older horses will be battling for supremacy over a mile. For four-year-olds and upwards, it has been won
